The culture clash between social games and core gamers was on full display at GDC. I have been called a traitor to the cause of core gamers, even. At the awards show, when a Zynga rep claimed the social games award for Farmville and did a little bit of recruiting from the stage, he was not only booed, but someone shouted out, “But you don’t make games!” This is a common sentiment out there in the usual gamer haunts.

I have many many thoughts on all this — and I have been posting some of them in various places when discussions arise.

Yes, Farmville is a game. It just requires fairly little skill compared to games for “advanced” gamers. But by any reasonable definition of game, it fits perfectly.

You have to make choices (they are strategic choices rather than real-time, but so what? Games have a long tradition of slower play). The choices require knowledge and skill (the skill is what gets derisively called “spreadsheet gaming” by the cognoscenti, but that’s a brush that EVE Online and other MMOs have been tarred with too). You have to prepare for the challenge. You can screw up. You get rewarded for doing well, etc.

It may seem elementary to those who can juggle complicated business sims, but think of it as the training wheels version for novices to that genre, and you won’t be far off. I think people who didn’t play games in the early days forget that the level of complexity they enjoy today is a phenomenon of the last ten years, a symptom of typical genre development. Social games are more advanced than most of the games made from 1970 to 1988.

Yes, social games truly are social. They just work on somewhat different modes than real-time synchronous games do. Instead of rewarding real-time teamwork the way that group combat in an MMO, playing on a soccer team, or being a member of a chorus line does, they reward asynchronous behaviors.

Most specifically, there is a lot of exactly the sort of weak-tie social design that was intrinsic to Star Wars Galaxies and Asheron’s Call: stuff around gifts, networks of mutual benefit, etc. More, they are exploring some of these things in a deeper way than MMOs do (because MMOs fall back on the synchronous crutch). Which is more indicative of social ties, a user who logs in once a week for a raid, or a user who logs in every day to send every friend a gift? The answer is not straightforward, if you dig into social networking data.

Yes, it is arguably even an MMO. The core activity is single-player, but the features around gifting, fertilizing, helping build structures collaboratively, etc, are all massively multiplayer techniques. Oh, they are not yet truly virtual worlds, though some of them do feature real-time chat, and more will over time, because in many many cases it is a value-add of a feature.

Long ago, I posed the question of whether American Idol was an MMO. And in that post, I said

It’s surprising, in a way, how little collective action matters in most MMOs. Here’s a medium that allows it better than any other game type, and yet we still see fairly little collective action — and when we do, it’s raids — arguably, exactly the wrong sort of collective action to really play to the strengths of what virtual spaces can do, precisely because what MMOs offer is spaces with thousands in them, not spaces with a few dozen.

Well, here we are. Collective action is starting to matter in the social games, and it’s going to matter more, not less precisely because it is an assumed core premise of the genre.

No, social games are not what we think of as a virtual world. But as I said the other day, that definition is evolving.

Yes, social games make money. Do some Googling, people! And no, it’s not all from scams.Yes, there are shady practices. But not all games use them, and if they do, it is less every day as the market gets cleaned up. And even when they do, they are not the bulk of the money.

Social games are not just a fad. There have been a lot of comparisons to things like motion control, 3d imaging, and so on. But back in 2008 there were Gamasutra articles about whether retro-looking gaming was a fad; before 3d graphics got good enough, there were questions about whether it was a fad… the key thing to look at here is whether there are underlying technical and social factors that are pushing development in a particular direction.

In the case of retro looks (which are now a firmly established aesthetic), the answer lay in the somewhat complicated fact that a younger gamer sees all previous aesthetics side-by-side and does not judge their quality based on technology, the way that older gamers do. A push towards innovation and artistic intent in game design called forth the ghost of the 8-bit era, and the pixelated look became an identity badge. Tech helped this along — the rise of Flash as a common game development platform resulted in a “Flash aesthetic” driven by the display limitations that today we see in console games such as PixelJunk Eden and Patapon.

In the case of 3d, the march of technology simply made it work over time, and it evolved from gimmick to tool. This may yet happen with 3d displays as well, or motion control.

In the case of social games, you have to look at the overall context too. As I have been saying for quite some time, all games are becoming connected experiences. And it turns out that social networks are becoming the glue. They are sweeping away all the “gamer-only” networks that so many companies started.

The value in these networks lies in the connectivity to friends, the easy distribution of content across the social graph, the web accessibility, and so on. These are things that we now take for granted. The genie is not going to go back into the bottle.

Now, is the investment level going to change? Absolutely. The white-hot heat around the segment will definitely subside as everyone gets used to the fact that the market is here to stay.

No, social games won’t turn into core games. This is one of the misconceptions that AAA developers often have as they try to establish themselves in the market. It is absolutely true that social games are going to grow more sophisticated over time. But they will do so by growing further along the direction they have already been going.

If you look at the AAA game world today, you can trace just about everything in it to the early core gamer market. Video games got going with sports, dragons, robots, guns, jumping & climbing, and cars. Those were the first big ideas. And here we are now, decades in, and they are still the big ideas. Many other ideas have come along since, but somehow they have always been quirky, “outside the mainstream” — like, say, when Rollercoaster Tycoon, or Guitar Hero, or The Sims came along. The only way something like “playing house” can possibly be “outside the mainstream” is if there’s a subculture in charge.

Well, social games are here and they managed to get themselves established largely without reference to those tropes. As a result, they have a different set of starting premises. Many of the things that were “quirky” are “normal” and vice versa. Central design tropes  include cooperation rather than competition; asynchronous rather than synchronous play; social dynamics; and a very different set of core cultural references. There’s more.

What will happen over time is that this new audience will grow in sophistication. They already take for granted all of the elements of a farming game, for example. You can think of the farming game as equivalent to any other genre, and replete with design tropes that are exactly equivalent to conventions like WASD, hit points, skill point allocation, rocket jumping, and tank-nuker-healer, if you like.

All that is going to happen is a recapitulation of design history, only with a new of new assumptions embedded in the games:

• a far broader set of cultural references.
• a new and different set of core artistic choices driven by different rendering technology
• a fresh and exciting set of design paradigms built around asynchronous sociability and large-scale weak-tie “guild” structures — hoo, is there a design essay lurking in the difference between a guild and a neighbor ring...!
• a whole new set of business models and practices

What this boils down to is that social games will grow along those axes, and not magically turn into what core gamers today consider to be core games. It’s a mistake to think that the game development industry is going to manage to magically make this audience fall in love with sports, dragons, robots, guns, jumping & climbing, and cars.

But there’s hope for core gamers nonetheless: These games are the new home of “worldy” games, in some ways. And they are bringing neglected genres back to life.

Social games are going to push boundaries in design areas that are currently neglected. A renaissance in simulation and strategy games is likely, and I don’t think it is an accident that so many prominent AAA strategy game developers are in social games now.

If what you have craved is greater user agency and impact on a persistent world, a greater sense of community and economic interdependence — those are features that are intrinsic to this new market. As an example, I would point out that there was a core MMO game that many of the readers of this blog loved that had a farming game where you had to check in every few days to collect your stuff and decide what to try to harvest next. And it’s wasn’t Farmville. It was Star Wars Galaxies. In many ways, the features that were seen as oddest or least “gamer-like” in the worldy MMOs are going to be among core features in the social games: housebuilding, shopkeeping, farming, dancing, dress-up, even hairdressing. Right now, these are one-to-a-game. But one possible direction of development is that they not be.

I have thoughts on what all this means for the core games we know and love, but I’ll leave those for another day.

It is my pleasure to announce a new project to better the Ubuntu.com website experience, specifically for users who prefer a language other than English. The new project, called Website Localization will put a short (4-5 word) message on any www.Ubuntu.com <http://www.ubuntu.com/> web page directing users to more resources in their preferred language.

This project has two main parts to it. The first part of the Website Localization project is the technical aspect of the project. It is the goal of the project to create a script that will pull out of a users web browser their preferred language. After obtaining this information, the script will cross reference this language against a list of languages that have approved resources offered, and then display a short link to their languages landing page.

The second part of this project is creating landing pages for as many resources as possible. This part of the project will be done by LoCos and the i18n team. The landing pages will be on the wiki, and will be ever changing to direct users to the best information that we can give them.

Currently, the goal is to have the project completed and implemented by the end of May. I would also like to have a working demo of the project by April 19th so that we have plenty of time to fix any problems that arise prior to the final implementation of this project.

I can’t do all of this myself, so I am going to need help from the Ubuntu community. At this point, I need some assistance with the technical side of the project. I need a few people to create the script that will detect the users preferred language, and then show them a link to the landing page in their language. If you have the skills needed to help out with this Website Localization project, please send me an email with your name, launchpad account, a little bit of information about the experience you have and your general ability (time zone, and anything else that may help me out). My goal is to get a group of a few people to work on the technical aspect of this project and have a meeting in the next few weeks to discuss the project in a little more detail, and determine the best way to make this happen.

[Discuss the Ubuntu.com Website Localization Project on the Forum]

Originally sent to the loco-contacts mailing list by Chris Johnston on Wed Mar 17 19:32:43 GMT 2010

As reported by Journalism.co.uk on Wednesday, the BBC will today depart from normal broadcast methods and experiment with a global live translation event, using its 13 different language services. The primary house rule of SuperPower Nation is that different languages must be used. Will it work? The event’s editor Mark Sandell, who also [...]

Before we get into the how-to, we felt it would be appropriate to explain a little bit about how this came to be. As many of you may remember, a couple of months ago we attended CES 2010. While there, we also attended the It Won’t Stay in Vegas Blogger party and ended up meeting the guys from Woot. After all of us spent a little bit of time appreciating the open bar, a group of us stood ended up standing around and talking shop for a while. All of a sudden, a member of our group, Jeremy Grosser, proposed the idea that Hackaday and Woot form a partnership. Basically, they would give us a heads up on what they are going to sell and we would write up a how-to on how to do something cool or useful with that product. Then, when the day came for Woot to sell the product, we would post our how-to. What you are reading right now just so happens to be that idea in action, the first official partnership between Hackaday and Woot. In this how-to, we’ll be taking apart the Wowwee Rovio mobile webcam robot, adding some super-bright LEDs for better see-in-the-dark action, and see how some software called RoboRealm can give it a little bit of artificial intelligence.

If don’t have a Rovio yet, you should probably head over to Woot and pick one up so you can follow along. Also, be sure to pick up a copy of RoboRealm at deals.woot while you’re at it. It is important to note that while writing this how-to, we used a modified design of the Rovio Head-Mounted LED hack, posted to RoboCommunity by [Rudolph].

Parts

- 6 super-bright white LEDs (Ours were rated for 3.3v with an intensity of 7000mcd.)
- 1 2N2907 PNP Transistor (We found ours in a 15 transistor combo pack from RadioShack.)
- 1 10ohm resistor
- 1 2.2k ohm resistor
- 22g solid hookup wire
- RadioShack 3×2x1″ Project Enclosure (We used the plastic back panel as a place to mount our LEDs.)
- 5mm LED holders (Optional. We ended up using them to mount our LEDs in their poorly drilled holes.)
- Heat-shrink tubing (Optional, but recommended.)
- A small strip of perfboard

We picked up most of our parts from RadioShack, but these parts are so common that you should be able to pick them up from any electronics components store.

Disassembly

The first step towards giving our Rovio some much needed extra light is, of course, to disassemble it. After turning the Rovio upside down, remove the six phillips-head screws and carefully remove the top shell to gain access to the Rovio’s internals. While you won’t be able to fully detach the top shell, you should be able to lay it next to the bottom part of the Rovio as seen above.

Inside of the Rovio, there are two main PCBs, the control board and the power supply board. For the purposes of this how-to, we will only need to modify the power supply board. To gain access to the power supply board, simply remove the two phillips-head screws that secure the board vertically. After you gain access to the board, you will then need to identify the ground and positive pads on the PCB. We will be tapping into these pads later to power our array of LEDs. One other item of interest to us is the white wire leading from the control board to the LED headlight board. This wire will allow us to control our new headlights through the Rovio’s web interface.

After firing up your soldering iron, you’ll need to solder two wires onto the power supply board. As you can see above, there are two areas with tiny little holes, allowing for easy access to both GND and VCC. After you have soldered both of these wires, screw the board back in and then turn your attention towards the white wire mentioned previously. After cutting the white wire, solder a length of hookup wire to the end of it and insulate it with appropriately sized heat-shrink tubing. Also, it’s probably a good idea to remove the LED headlight board entirely. This gives you three openings to run your wires out of from the Rovio to our new headlight panel. After you’ve removed the board, you can cut the wires leading to both the infrared LED and receiver. These function as a forward facing “radar” to alert the user if there are any obstacles ahead. We decided to salvage ours by placing them both in the new panel that we will soon be creating. If you choose to salvage your infrared “radar” as well, then remember to solder extension wires between the appropriate leads and the LED and receiver. We actually used some telephone tap connectors (from RadioShack) to extend the three wires leading to the infrared receiver, but soldering should work just fine. Now that you’re finished with all of the internal modifications to the Rovio, we can move on to the circuitry behind this hack.

The Circuit

In order to make sure that we can control our replacement LED headlights through Rovio’s web interface, we need to build a circuit that will detect when the headlights are triggered via the web interface and activate our headlights accordingly. To do this, we’ll use a PNP transistor to switch the ground of our headlight circuit. As you can see from the schematic above, the white wire that we mentioned earlier will be connected to the base of the transistor via a 2.2k resistor, the ground from the power supply board will be connected to the collector of the transistor, and the emitter of the transistor will be connected to the ground of the parallel array of LEDs. If you want to, you could probably add a few more LEDs to this design. Just remember, if you change the number or type of the LEDs, you will have to recalculate the value of the current-limiting resistor between VCC and the positive pin of the parallel LED array. After we’ve reviewed our schematic and we’re comfortable with it, we should be ready to breadboard.

As you can see, there really isn’t that much to our circuit as far as components go. The black and red wires come directly from the power supply board. Our voltage reading was right around 6.5v. Please note that your voltage may vary depending on the charge of your Rovio’s NiMH battery. The green wire was soldered to the white wire inside of the Rovio, and controls whether the transistor lets the ground flow to the LEDs. We found that the best way to test this circuit while breadboarding was to turn on the Rovio and turn on and off the headlights using the web interface. After confirming that the circuit works consistently, you can go ahead and solder the circuit onto some perfboard and connect to the Rovio.

The circuit really doesn’t take up much space on the perfboard. We decided to use the extra space on our board as a makeshift terminal block to extend the infrared LED. While soldering the circuit onto the perfboard, be sure to remember the orientation of your transistor. If you accidentally put it in backwards, you could switch the collector and emitter, burning out the transistor. We mention this only because we actually did it the first time we assembled our board, and we ended up having to swap in a new transistor before reassembling the board. After you’ve assembled and verified that your circuit works, we can move on to assembling our headlight panel.

Drilling and Wiring

On your blank panel, carefully drill 8 holes in any configuration you would like. When drilling your holes, be sure to use a 3/16″ drill bit. While it is actually slightly smaller than a 5mm LED, you can rotate the drill once or twice around to widen the hole. The main thing is that you don’t want to make the holes too large for the LEDs, which, incidentally, we ended up doing. One of them was so wide that we had to change the placement of our LEDs to make sure that they all more or less fit.

I don’t think that I need to get into too much detail here, but the major thing to remember is that the LEDs need to be wired in parallel. Also, be sure that you are connecting cathode to cathode and anode to anode, otherwise the whole circuit just won’t work. After you’ve completely assembled the panel, attach the wires the ground from your perfboard and the VCC from the power supply board to the circuit, and use the web interface to test that the LEDs get switched on when they’re supposed to be. If you decided to salvage the infrared “radar”, don’t forget to attach the infrared LED and receiver to the board in the two holes left over.

After you’ve finished with the drilling and wiring, you should be ready to attach the panel to the Rovio. While it was a little tricky for us, we were able to epoxy the panel to the underside of the front of the Rovio so that it looked like it was vertically mounted.

Now that your Rovio can see better in darker situations, lets take a look at RoboRealm.

RoboRealm

While investigating all of the different things that we could do with our Rovio, we stumbled upon a piece of software called RoboRealm. RoboRealm allows you to take video input from any webcam, including the Rovio, and run it through any number of different modules to process the images. After the images are processed, the software can even see if any pre-defined conditions are met, and if they are it will instruct the robot to act accordingly. Combine that visual input with the audio input/output on the Rovio, and you can do some pretty cool stuff. The interesting part about this software is that it officially supports the Rovio out of the box. We’ve had a chance to mess around with it a little bit, and as far as we can tell, it seems like pretty powerful software.

We already know all of the cool things that we want to do with this software and our Rovio, but we’re curious, what would you do with it? Leave us your answer in the comments, and if we see something that we find truly inspiring, we’ll do some research, write it up, and post a how-to explaining how to do it. Who knows, there might even be a brand new Rovio and a free copy of RoboRealm in it for the winner too…

Universal Music Group has debuted a new Guitar Hero-like music simulation game for the iPhone. Priced at $4.99 and available in the App Store right now, it’s called Six String [iTunes link].

The emphasis is on a more realistic and deeper guitar-playing experience than you get in other music games, though it’s still not quite like the real thing. The game comes with licensed UMG songs by artists like Bon Jovi and Tom Petty. It even includes a song by The Scorpions (“Raised on a Rock”) from an album that won’t hit shelves digital or otherwise until March 23.

There are two game modes: Practice Mode and Studio Mode. Practice mode gives you feedback on how accurate you are in hitting notes. Studio Mode turns off those hints and replaces them with status bars that measure your progress. If you make too many mistakes, you’re kicked out of the song.

We played the game for a while today, and our impressions are that it’s one of the better music games for the iPhone. It won’t be as fun as playing Rock Band on the Nintendo Wii with your entire family, but it’s a worthy distraction, and that’s what mobile games are supposed to be.

How You Play

I played electric guitar in a Blues band professionally for two years. Thanks to that experience, I can tell you that while Six String is not too much like the real thing, it feels like a closer approximation than Guitar Hero. That’s despite the lack of a guitar peripheral — not that I’m complaining that there’s not one (you wouldn’t want to carry around a peripheral with your phone, obviously!).

Six String feels more like a real guitar because the mistakes you make are similar to the ones you’d make on a real guitar — with one hand, anyway. The game simulates the strumming and picking hand and has you using the touchscreen to either strum, tap, or hold each individual string (or a group if strings) in correct time as the notes come up. It works well and it feels a little bit like you’re actually playing music when you’re getting it right.

The game also prompts you with chord changes on harder difficulty levels, but you perform them by tapping with the same fingers you use to play the strings. If you miss notes or chord changes, the music is digitally altered to sound a bit off. It doesn’t sound very realistic, but you can tell what you’re doing wrong. As with Guitar Hero, the skills of real guitar players won’t translate here or vice versa. But that’s not really the point, because it’s a fun game to play.

When you complete a song, you’re given detailed stats and feedback. You can share them with friends through the online service described below.

Online Features

The game comes with six songs: Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love A Bad Name,” Tom Petty’s “Runnin’ Down A Dream,” Fall Out Boy’s “Thnks Fr Th Mmrs,” Peter Frampton’s “Show Me The Way” and Orianthi’s “According To You.” If you tire of those, you can buy more in the included music store. Each new track costs $0.99. If you’d like, you can buy the same songs on iTunes from within the app. You can also watch music videos or download ring tones.

Six String connects to a social gaming service called Plus+. You can share your top scores, compete for a spot on the leader boards, and check on any friend’s status. UMG put some Twitter and Facebook integration in the mix, too. It’s similar to the Feint network that’s used by several other iPhone games out there.

Do you have a favorite music game for the iPhone? Head down to the comments below to fill us and the other readers in!

Tags: App, apple, apple app store, guitar, iphone, Mobile 2.0, music, six string, six strings, umg, universal music group, video games

Not only does PlayStation Move enable realistic motion controls for PS3 games -- it also allows for corporate dispatches from the future. We didn't hear about that at any press conference! But there's Kevin Butler, addressing us from November 2010 about advances in nutrition and the success of the PlayStation Move. That means, according to Sony's time travel technology, the Move should be out sometime in November at the latest.

This commercial features plenty of footage of some guy completely battering air in Motion Fighter, along with some not-so-subtle callouts of the motion-based competition, and even a little bit of reverent Tretton worship. Check the ad out after the break.

Gallery: PlayStation Move (Joystiq's Photos)

[Thanks, Antony!]

Continue reading Kevin Butler shows that PlayStation Move only does time travel

Kevin Butler shows that PlayStation Move only does time travel originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Not only does PlayStation Move enable realistic motion controls for PS3 games -- it also allows for corporate dispatches from the future. We didn't hear about that at any press conference! But there's Kevin Butler, addressing us from November 2010 about advances in nutrition and the success of the PlayStation Move. That means, according to Sony's time travel technology, the Move should be out sometime in November at the latest.

This commercial features plenty of footage of some guy completely battering air in Motion Fighter, along with some not-so-subtle callouts of the motion-based competition, and even a little bit of reverent Tretton worship. Check the ad out after the break.

Gallery: PlayStation Move (Joystiq's Photos)

[Thanks, Antony!]

Continue reading Kevin Butler shows that PlayStation Move only does time travel

Kevin Butler shows that PlayStation Move only does time travel originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

The abundance of pop culture out there means that things are going to slip by, especially when they’re targeted to a different demographic. Which is why I feel like I’ve seen a large number of comments recently from people who have no clue who Justin Bieber is. (It’s kind of reminiscent of when everyone was confused by that Fred kid, including the fact that they even look a little bit alike.)

I wouldn’t argue that being familiar with the Canadian-born pop star/teen idol is essential for complete pop culture awareness, but for those interested in what the kids are into these days, here are some things you need to know about Justin Bieber if you are over the age of 21.

He’s from Stratford in Ontario, Canada

The reason this is worth noting is because that is far far away from the hustle and bustle of the American music industry. It’s also far away from some of Bieber’s friends and family, which is how Bieber got his start on YouTube: According to Reuters, Bieber’s mother first started uploading clips of him performing in 2007 (at the age of 13) because the video files were too big to email to friends and family. Once he built a following, he was discovered by manager Scooter Braun — a story that echoes Justin Timberlake’s discovery of Esmee Denters. Except that unlike Denters…

He’s gotten very successful very fast

Largely unknown until midway through 2009 to even the teen set, Bieber has exploded since even before the release of his first, My World, which has gone platinum and given Bieber performing opportunities ranging from It’s On With Alexa Chung to the White House. His YouTube channel has almost 150,000,000 million views, making his channel the #72 most viewed channel of all time, and the third most viewed in Canada. Why?

The kids frakking love him

I’m not just talking about this three-year-old girl (who, per the video description, “didn’t take a nap and [thus] was very emotional”). Despite claims that the under-18 set doesn’t use Twitter, Bieber has 1.4 million Twitter followers and is frequently a trending topic of discussion.

In fact he’s so popular that a riot, in which six people were injured, broke out at the Long Island Roosevelt Field Mall in November 2009 because he canceled a performance. (In an odd twist, record executive James A. Roppo was arrested on felony charges because he didn’t Twitter out a cancellation notice; he’s since plead not guilty.) Plus…

He generates interesting reactions from the rest of the web community

YouTube vloggers constantly invoke his name for views, including What the Buck’s Michael Buckley, who enlisted a Canadian correspondent to report on local feelings about the teen sensation.

And don’t even get comedian Aziz Ansari started about Bieber — or, to be specific, don’t get Ansari’s alter ego Raaaaaaaaaandy (first created for the film Funny People) started, as the stand-up comedian is convinced that Bieber’s latest hit, Baby, rips him off.

He sings like a girl

Listen to this before you argue with me, especially when you consider that in Baby, he’s pretty much singing the typical girl part in a hip-hop tune — it’s not hard to imagine Rihanna or Alicia Keys filling in for him. The only reason I deem this worthy of mentioning is that his career might not have much longevity when his voice breaks. I mean, he might end up sounding like this. But puberty is fickle.

Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): New Use For Web Stats: Finding Hot Markets, Offline

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Contrary to popular belief, web developers do sometimes leave their desks, and when they do, that’s always when clients seem to call or disaster seems to strike.

We’ve highlighted some iPhone apps here that will help you out in those situations, and a few others that will stash several neat tricks up your proverbial sleeve for when you’re away from the office.

Have a look, and if you’re an iPhone-owning web dev, let us know which apps you find useful for your work in the comments below.

1. Code Cheat Sheets

Concentric Sky offers a range of code “cheat sheets” ideal for when your mind just goes blank and you’re away from your usual reference material. Priced at $0.99 each, there are apps available for CSS, mySQL, JavaScript, php, RegEx, jQuery and HTML — the last three of which let you write and test code inside the app. Searchable, and clearly laid out, the info in the apps is available offline, unlike other options that link out to external references. Whether you want to brush up on the bus, or need to code on-the-go, these will be a useful weapon in your web design arsenal. Another great alternative is jQuery 1.4.

Cost: $0.99 each

2. Color Stream

A little bit like Adobe’s Kuler on your handset, Color Stream is an app that will help you narrow down the correct color, or palette of colors, for a project. The Lite version of the app is available for free, and lets you create a palette of five colors side-by-side using a slider bar in either RGB or CMYK modes. You can then identify your chosen shades by their hexadecimal values for use on the web. This is handy enough, but the paid-for option (priced at $2.99) offers even more functionality, such as the ability to save palettes, use the built-in color schemes, or even match colors perfectly by creating a palette based on elements from an image or photo.

Cost: Lite version is free, full version is $2.99

3. FTP on the Go

If you need to be able to securely log-in to a server away from your desk, then this app — which emulates desktop FTP clients on your mobile — might well be the answer. As well as offering the ability to edit text on the fly and make those changes live quickly, there’s the option to view common file types, download them to your iPhone, e-mail them, and upload videos and correctly-sized pics from your mobile device too. Meanwhile, cleverly getting around the iPhone’s multi-tasking issues, there’s a built-in web browser so you can see changes without leaving the app, allowing for speedy work — which as far as we know, no client has ever complained about.

If you don’t need access to your FTP server, don’t forget about Dropbox for the iPhone, which will let you view your Dropbox folder while on the go.

Cost: $6.99

4. Ego

For an on-the-go, at-a-glance look at you site’s stats, either for your own consumption, or to keep a customer satisfied, Ego is a one-stop-shop for such data. This app does not go into extreme detail, but it will summarize data from Ember, Feedburner, Google Analytics, Mint (with an additional download), Squarespace, Twitter and Vimeo. Data such as how many Twitter followers an account has racked up, feed subscription totals, and visitor numbers are all at your fingertips in an easy-to-use app that saves you logging into to a plethora of individual services. The developer, Garrett Murray, says Ego offers a flexible framework for adding support for other services, and welcomes suggestions on adding other stat-tracking options.

Cost: $1.99

5. Read & Note

In addition to offering a full-screen browser (as opposed to the iPhone’s Safari window), this app allows you to make notes on, or copy and paste text from, web pages. Whether you’re browsing around for inspiration or assessing a site for changes/improvements, being able to easily annotate the web with a mobile app is simply brilliant. Other functionality includes the ability to upload .txt .doc .pdf .ppt .xls .rtf .jpg files, bookmark sites, and share uploaded documents over Wi-Fi to any web-enabled computer.

Cost: $1.99

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Tags: apps, code, html, iphone apps, Mobile 2.0, web design, web developer, Web Development, web development series

It is my pleasure to announce a new project to better the Ubuntu.com website experience, specifically for users who prefer a language other than English. The new project, called Website Localization will put a short (4-5 word) message on any www.Ubuntu.com web page directing users to more resources in their preferred language.

This project has two main parts to it. The first part of the Website Localization project is the technical aspect of the project. It is the goal of the project to create a script that will pull out of a users web browser their preferred language. After obtaining this information, the script will cross reference this language against a list of languages that have approved resources offered, and then display a short link to their languages landing page.

The second part of this project is creating landing pages for as many resources as possible. This part of the project will be done by LoCos and the i18n team. The landing pages will be on the wiki, and will be ever changing to direct users to the best information that we can give them.

Currently, the goal is to have the project completed and implemented by the end of May. I would also like to have a working demo of the project by April 19th so that we have plenty of time to fix any problems that arise prior to the final implementation of this project.

I can’t do all of this myself, so I am going to need help from the Ubuntu community. At this point, I need some assistance with the technical side of the project. I need a few people to create the script that will detect the users preferred language, and then show them a link to the landing page in their language. If you have the skills needed to help out with this Website Localization project, please send me an email with your name, launchpad account, a little bit of information about the experience you have and your general ability (time zone, and anything else that may help me out). My goal is to get a group of a few people to work on the technical aspect of this project and have a meeting in the next few weeks to discuss the project in a little more detail, and determine the best way to make this happen.

I am often asked for pointers on writing book reviews and recently realized that, to my recollection, I've never written on the topic. That may be because I consider myself quite a poor book reviewer. I got into writing reviews (over 500 book reviews ago now) by circumstance more than skill; I had a blog, I read a lot, and book reviews just started to happen. Yet I am aware that I am not a great reviewer. Read the Times or a theological journal and you will encounter a completely different skill level in reviewers.

Having said that, I think I am able to write reviews that appeal to a particular audience. And in that way at least, I've been successful. So today let me share just a few pointers for those who are considering writing reviews for a medium similar to this one.

Know Your Audience

As I said a moment ago, any success I've had owes more to writing for a defined audience than in great skill. I know who reads this site and I try to write about books that will be of interest to that kind of reader. If my IQ was about 100 points higher and if I wrote for Themelios I might read and review Revitalizing Theological Epistemology: Holistic Evangelical Approaches to the Knowledge of God. As it is, though, I know who I am and I know who reads this web site and I try to review books accordingly. Almost by definition, the people who read this site share at least some of my interests and so what is of interest to me is of interest to them. That's part of the beauty of a blog.

So know your audience. Know the kind of book they will want to read and then anticipate the kind of questions they will want answered before they consider reading that book. Here are the types of questions I tend to answer:

What's the Point?

An author will typically not wait very long before offering a defense of his book's existence. He will most often say "This is why I have written this book." I seek to communicate that information within my review. So, for example, in my recent review of The Masculine Mandate I quoted the author as he said, "My aim in writing this book is to help men to know and fulfill the Lord's calling as it is presented so clearly to us in God's Word." It's usually just that simple. But that little bit of information is very helpful to the reader. And you'd be surprised how often reviewers neglect to include it.

Who Is It For?

As an author defines the purpose for his book, he also tends to define his audience. This is not always the case as some books are written for just about anyone (think, for example, of Malcolm Gladwell's books); but most books do have a defined audience. Again, from my review of The Masculine Mandate: "Richard Phillips writes that his new book The Masculine Mandate 'is written for Christian men who not only don't want to lose that precious biblical understanding, but who want to live out the calling to true manliness God has given us.'"

What Does He Say?

Once I've covered the purpose of the book and its intended audience, I tend to offer a summary of what the author communicates. To do this I sometimes pick out just a few of his more substantial points or I may trace his outline, moving chapter by chapter or part by part. In just a few paragraphs I want to offer a summary of the complete book, giving enough to be interesting but not so much that it becomes burdensome. Two or three paragraphs is often sufficient here.

Why Does It Matter?

Before I wrap up the review, I want to help people understand what sets this book apart and what makes it unique. This is often the most important part of the review. In almost every case the book will have some close competition, so it is important to offer evidence of what makes it different from the others. This is a good time to discuss a few of the author's very good or very bad points, to agree with him, to quibble with him or to offer up a wholly different perspective. If he says anything outrageously good or outrageously bad, here is the place to bring that out.

What Do You Think?

Reviews are, by their very nature, subjective. An author of a review cannot entirely remove himself from it. Ultimately, many readers are looking less for a summation of the book's content than they are looking for the opinion of the reviewer. They simply want to know, "Should I read it or not?" Many readers will do little more than skip to the bottom of the review to find that information (which is one of the reasons I avoid star ratings or other easy tip-offs that would allow people to not bother reading the review). So I generally try to offer my own opinion, saying who should read this book and why (or who should not read it and why). At 10MillionWords I've gotten into the habit of closing each review with "Verdict: Read it if..."

Mix It Up

Having said all of this, I find it best not to follow any single structure too rigidly. There are some review styles that call for a kind of stylized rigidity (see PluggedIn's movie reviews as an example) and that is well and good. But unless you have to write within a certain structure, it is probably best to vary things at least occasionally.

There is also value in offering reviews of a variety of kinds of books, a variety of genres. Again, this will depend on the context for those reviews; a theological journal will likely only print reviews of theological books. But often at a blog or in a magazine you will have freedom to try something very different. Know your audience and feel free to tell them about books that are, for some reason, particularly interesting to you, even if they are somewhat unusual.

Logistics

Finally, just a few words about logistics. In terms of length, go with "just long enough." Communicate what you need to communicate but be wary of going too long. This is particularly true when writing for an online publication where people are accustomed to skimming more than reading. A little too short is probably better than a little too long. Also, it's often a good idea to add a "buy it" link at the end of the review, pointing to Amazon or another relevant bookstore. If you are recommending a book and people are going to buy it anyway, you may as well pocket a few cents for referring them.

Games are now supported long after they're released in retail stores, but some consumers cry foul when they buy a game, go online, and see there is already downloadable content to add to the experience. Why force gamers to go online to get the content? Why not just include the content on the disc?

We spoke with Casey Hudson, the project director for Mass Effect 2, at GDC. He's a man who knows a little bit about post-release content, and he explained it in a way that makes sense. The simple answer? It takes time to get discs into the hands of gamers.

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